


Baked Goods and Belonging

by roseapprentice



Series: Unrelated ABO Frostiron Oneshots [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: A/B/O, ABO, AU, Allegorical Sexism, Alpha Tony Stark, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Baker!Tony, Bakery AU, Family Angst, Flagrant Romanticizing of Donuts, Fluff, Food, Loki vs Crab, M/M, Omega Loki, Possible Emotional Abuse tw, Pre-Slash Sweetness, The Woods at Night, Winter, a bit poetical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 14:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3533582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseapprentice/pseuds/roseapprentice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki's home doesn't feel very welcoming, so this evening he opts to sneak out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baked Goods and Belonging

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FelicityGS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS/gifts).



As it happens, there is only one food in the world that Loki is allergic to.

Of course Thor forgot. Of course he brought home crab for dinner.

Loki can smell it permeating the whole house. He’s curled up in his bedroom under two layers of blankets and he already hates the air around him. It’s not like he’s very averse to any other foods. How could they manage to forget something like that? Or did they just not care? Gods, it stinks.

A few more minutes and he’s had enough of this to risk getting into real trouble. He tosses the covers aside and dresses to go out. Double-checks his calendar to make sure his heat isn’t coming up before he packs a handbag and slings it across his shoulder and head, secure enough not to hinder the climb down from his bedroom window. Leaves a note on his bed promising he’ll be back by midnight.

Frigga would tell him to act like the adult he’s just recently become and  _tell her_  when something is bothering him.

But it’s a trap, of course, because if he complains then Odin will give him that look that says,  _I’m tired of your whining_ , and tell him to sit at the table with the family and eat something else.

Then Loki would sit and pretend to eat, surrounded by the smells of seafood and disappointed alpha. He’d ask to be excused for a walk in the open air and be told an omega really shouldn’t go walking alone after dark, and couldn’t he wait until the rest of the family was ready to go with him?

The Borsons are old-fashioned that way.

Loki pulls on his boots and opens the window. He’s hit by a world of fresh winter air, closes his eyes and leans out to breathe it in.

He loves the winter at night.

He has enough sense to go back for a coat, and then he starts his climb. The hardest part is getting the window closed after him once he’s out. He’s got one foot on an air vent cover and the other on the top ledge of a first-story window and his elbows are braced on his own windowsill, and his fingers get caught and pinched a few times throughout the finicky task of closing the window from the outside with one hand and very little leverage.

A little more quiet swearing and he’s out, starting out along the street toward the center of town. There’s no real destination in mind, and he finds he’s happy to walk a few miles without thinking one up. The night is dark and clouded, and there’s a light dusting of snow on the ground that fell a few hours ago, fresh enough to be picked up by the occasional gust of freezing wind.

It’s perfect.

He passes a familiar line of shops and realizes he’s near his favorite bakery, so he tracks it down. It’s only just closed, the sign flipped but the lights on. It still smells like cookies and baking yeast and home.

But of course the door is locked.

Because it’s closed.

Loki tells himself he shouldn’t loiter here, should probably head home or at least somewhere more crowded and well lit. Maybe one of the other shops.

He tells himself that, and then he presses his face to the wall next to the door the same way he used to press his face to his mother’s side as a child, seeking comfort. His nose is full of icy air and warm bread. Wind howls in his ears alongside the clang of dishes as the young alpha who owns the place putters around inside. It’s a wonderful, contented sort of longing that he feels right here, so much better than his bed at home and wishing he were _anywhere else_.

His family knows he’s gone by now. He’s missing dinner and they’re worried and angry. But the air is tossing fallen snow up against his legs and he lets that drive away everything else. He’s pleasantly lost in darkness, and pleasantly grounded in the faux-incandescent glow of the LED lights inside the bakery.

Loki’s knees are going numb, but he doesn’t mind.

Then there’s a a series of clicks, and the door next to him jingles open with a gust of warm air and an inviting whiff of alpha. “Hey, sorry but we just closed, so — Loki?”

Loki pushes away from the wall and brushes a hand over his face, hoping the brick wall didn’t leave any unsightly smudges or imprints. “I suppose I arrived a few minutes too late,” he says sheepishly.

Loki admires Tony in a distant, detached way,  the way a loner admires a social butterfly — ooh and ahh at the wings, but don’t touch. The alpha is two or three years older than Loki, a smaller difference now than when they were in elementary school and never had reason to speak. It makes him twenty-one now at oldest. Young, to be owning and running a bakery, but for an alpha who comes from money it’s not really all that shocking.

Tony blinks, then opens the door a little wider. “No way man, you’re right on time. Friends get free food this time of night. C’mon in.”

Not quite believing his luck — Tony considers him a friend? — Loki smiles and walks past him. He stops just inside to wipe his feet on the mat, then stomps a bit for good measure because there’s snow packed into the treads of his boots. The warm air makes his thighs and knees prickle where he was losing feeling a minute ago.

"Can I grab your coat?"

Loki consents, and then there are welcome hands helping him slide the garment down his arms. The windows are dark and reflective around him now he’s inside, and the smell of sweets is pleasantly overpowering.

Tony hangs up Loki’s coat and then makes his way back behind the counter. “Have a seat. You really like the cream-filled doughnuts, right? They’re from the lunch rush, so a little stale, but not as much as they will be tomorrow. Haven’t really got enough extra today to bother driving twenty minutes out to the soup kitchen, so I just have to throw out any extra food anyway.”

Loki nods, picking out a seat where he can face the counter and pulling off his purse to hang it on the back of his chair.

Tony comes back with a large plate piled high with with doughnuts and cupcakes and stuffed bread rolls. He sits himself down right opposite Loki and picks one of the rolls up for himself, takes a bite out of it and closes his eyes in appreciation of his own work. “Mm. Something about being around food all day always makes me forget to eat. Guess I’m too busy making it to notice it’s not ending up in my stomach.”

Loki picks out one of the cream stuffed donuts. Tony’s right; they’re his favorite. “Yes, I’ve heard your assistant’s attempts to make you remember your lunch break.”

"Emphasis on ‘attempts,’" Tony admits wryly.

"So I gathered." Loki takes a bite and closes his eyes much the way Tony just did with his roll. For a few seconds his whole world is rich cream and powdered sugar, and the pastry is so soft that taking a bite is like falling into something. He thinks fleetingly that he’s going to have to marry this man, then takes another bite and thinks it much less fleetingly.

Loki rests his forearm down against the table and starts to cast about for a napkin for the sugar on his face. Then he catches Tony looking longingly at his mouth for a second, like maybe he’d like to lick it clean for him. Loki decides he doesn’t need a napkin.

"I’ve always wondered how you make these," Loki says, lying a bit to start a conversation. "Do you cook them with the cream inside?"

"Um, yes and no," Tony replies, then starts in on a long explanation of donut making as he warms to his topic. The lie pays off, because hearing Tony talk about his craft is fascinating. There’s an intricateness to it that he wouldn’t have guessed at, a dance of moving parts and chemical reactions.

They make their way, perhaps inadvisably, through the whole mound of breads and sweets between them. Two people eating food off the same plate is intimate somehow, Loki finds, like there’s more nourishment to be had in the sharing than in the bread.

He knows it’s in fashion these days for packs to eat together from a single dish. Loki is glad his family has resisted the fad, but right now he loves it, like he’s briefly allowed to be a piece something larger than his own pack. Not really larger, but like there’s space for him. Eat together, breathe together, laugh together, smile together. Loki is happy like this, and the thought almost scares him, but he stomps down the fear and asks Tony another question, and lets himself be happy.

Loki always liked the atmosphere here, and he’s only just realizing how much that atmosphere comes from one person.

By the end they’re so full that moving is awful, and Tony leans back and covers his eyes and groans. “I still have to finish closing up.”

Loki laughs at him but makes up for it by helping with the dishes.

Tony offers him a ride home. Loki says yes and mourns the shortness of the distance to his house. The lights go out and Tony leads Loki to the back exit. The cold is harder to take on a full stomach, but then Tony’s car has seat warmers and the world is perfect. “I wish we could just drive around for a while,” Loki says out loud without meaning to.

Then Tony says, “Can we?” and Loki checks the time and finds he still has a few hours before his self-imposed midnight deadline. It occurs to him that going out driving with an apha he barely knows is exactly the sort of thing his parents are most likely worried he might be doing.

Loki nods. “Just driving,” he says, and Tony nods back and finds a hilly, wooded road to explore. The trees are bare of leaves and dusted white, glinting in the headlights and casting shadows like claws as they pass by.

"When should you get back?"

"Midnight at latest. For a given definition of ‘should.’ I snuck out," he admits, not sure if it’s wise. Tony could take this moment to act the part of the older adult and pass judgement. Or worse, could jump too quickly to endorse Loki’s rashness in the salesmen-slick manner of an alpha trying to get laid.

But Tony just says, “Okay. Wanna talk about it?”

Loki is quiet for a while, staring as far as he can out into the blackness of the forest as he turns the thing over in his mind. “When I think about any one thing, it feels so small. I can’t complain, because it seems like there’s nothing of substance to complain about. But it all adds up. I can’t  _breathe_ in that house.”

"Sounds complicated."

"Maybe," Loki hedges. And then, sleepy with good food and hypnotized by the passing branches, it’s strangely east to speak his mind. So he adds, "Maybe it’s my fault for being the complicated one."

There’s another stretch of silence. And then, “Well, everyone’s complicated to the people who don’t understand them.”

"Would  _you_  claim to understand me?”

” _No_ ,” Tony accidentally laughs the word, and Loki tosses him a weak glare. “But that’s okay because I really like complicated. I think maybe you do too.”

"Maybe," Loki says again.

Maybe he likes complicated. And the thought that comes next is that maybe he likes  _himself_ , but he can’t tell if Tony nudged him toward that notion on purpose or not.

They drive for about half an hour more and then Tony finds a good spot to turn around. Then they drive home again and talk about books they like all the way, until the get near Loki’s house and Tony starts asking for directions.

They pull up where his bedroom window is in view but a few houses down, and Loki takes a breath. “Thank you very much. For the food. And the drive.”

“You had fun?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, lets do it again. Y’think?”

“I do,” Loki agrees with a grin. “Maybe I could even pull you away for a lunch break one day.”

“I’d like that,” Tony says, and his answering grin reaches his eyes and makes a warm home there. Then as Loki opens the car door and stands to leave, “Oh, hey, alright if I stick around until you’re inside?”

Because of alpha instincts, it _would_ feel strange for Tony, to not protect him.

“Sure.”

“Thanks.”

Loki closes the door and makes his way home. But it feels unfairly like leaving home and going somewhere else. He pulls his coat close around him because the air has gotten colder, or else he’s been spoiled by the heated car.

He has the self respect to head for the front door instead of the window. Someone will have long since noticed his absence.

There’s a note pinned to the knocker that says “LOKI” on the front, and Loki feels a little dread as he goes to unfold the paper.

But then he reads it.

"Loki

go in through the window

I saw your note so I told mom and dad you weren’t feeling well and you were staying in your room

sorry I forgot you were allergic

I’m an idiot

love, Thor”

Loki crumples the note up in his pocket and feels his chest do a funny thing.

It’s actually fine. Thor made sure it was fine. Frigga probably knows Thor lied, but if she pretended to believe his story then Loki doubts he’s in any trouble.

The climb up is harder than the climb down was, but at the end he’s back in his bed, winded and fed and safe from retaliation.

Maybe he can go to the bakery tomorrow.


End file.
